The art of chess: Duchamp and Nimzowitsch
Marcel Duchamp and Chess
Next year, 2026, will be the year of Marcel Duchamp and chess, with celebrations, exhibitions and simultaneous displays scattered across New York like leaflets from some well-meaning bureaucracy. Readers of this column, like countless others, already know that Duchamp played chess; the real question is whether anyone has paused to ask how good at the game he actually was.
The question is both pertinent and timely, in view of the forthcoming series of Duchamp exhibitions that will commence next year. Their starting point will be the Museum of Modern Art in New York, with their major retrospective opening on April 12 and running until August, after which it will transfer to the Philadelphia Museum of Art, subsequently arriving at the Georges Pompidou Centre by the Spring of 2027. There are also several major events in the pipeline for 2028, to mark the 60th anniversary of his death.
Two items are repeated about Duchamp as steadily as propaganda: that in 1923 he “gave up art for chess,” and that in 1927 his bride glued his chess pieces to the board in despair at losing her husband to the sixty-four squares. These stories have the fine polish of myth—too neat to be wholly believed—yet they cling stubbornly to his name and have managed to obscure the truth. The real Duchamp was impressive enough without embroidery. In 1925 the French Chess Federation recognised him as a Master, and between 1928 and 1933 he represented France in four Chess Olympiads. That is not the curriculum vitae of a dabbler.
His attachment to the game began early. Anyone looking at his 1910 and 1911 paintings, The Chessplayers and The Portrait of Chessplayers, would notice the intensity with which he regarded the act of calculation. Harry Golombek, a writer not given to exaggeration, remarked in his Encyclopaedia of Chess that the latter picture shows “a more complete picture of the process of chess-playing than many a stylised representational painting”.
Mark Kremer, the Dutch art critic, is one of the few commentators to treat Duchamp’s chess seriously as part of his artistic legacy. Writing later in New In Chess, Kremer pointed out that Duchamp cared less for the delicacy of the game than for its isolation—its shutting-out of the world. It is a fair observation. Chess, to Duchamp, was not an ornament but a kind of sealed chamber.
When Duchamp abandoned The Large Glass in 1923—declaring it permanently unfinished—he returned to France and threw his energies into chess with the zeal of a convert. He was then 36, an age at which many modern grandmasters begin worrying about their decline. Yet he plunged into tournaments, journalism, administration, and even chess literature. He wrote one chess book, translated another, reported for Ce Soir, helped run the French Chess Federation, and raised money for events. One sometimes has the impression that he treated chess the way others treat politics: a field to be tidied and improved according to one’s own lights.
What kind of player, then, was he?
A 1924 bulletin of the French Federation described him with admirable concision:
“ … étant donné son jeu profond et solide… sa froideur imperturbable, son style ingénieux… font de lui un adversaire redoutable.”
(“Given his profound and deep play… his imperturbable coolness and his ingenious style, together these qualities make him a redoubtable adversary.”)
Those opening words—étant donné—are worth storing away. They will turn up again, in an entirely different context.
It was Duchamp’s misfortune that the game by which he became most widely known was a loss: his encounter with Le Lionnais in Paris, 1932. Tartakower, the brilliant Franco-Polish grandmaster, annotated it in the Wiener Schachzeitung, thereby giving it the glint of authority. Le Lionnais himself, never shy about telling a good story, recalled it in a 1975 Studio International interview whenever Duchamp’s chess ability came up. Yet this single defeat says little. Duchamp had drawn with Tartakower in 1928, held Frank Marshall, the US champion, to a draw in the Hamburg Olympiad of 1930, and in 1929 defeated Koltanowski—the Belgian Champion and blindfold wizard—with startling speed. His tactical twists in that game, full of the paradox he delighted in, overwhelmed his opponent almost at once.
Here are the opening moves of that skirmish:
Georges Koltanowski vs. Marcel Duchamp
Paris, 1929, round 8
- d4 Nf6 2. c4 e6 3. Nc3 d6 4. e4 b6
This development of the Queen’s Bishop—so restrained, so apparently anti-natural—comes straight from the teachings of Aron Nimzowitsch, that thorn in the side of classical orthodoxy. Nimzowitsch urged players to delay advancing their centre pawns, to provoke, to restrain, to squeeze. His ideas, which once struck the world as lunacy, are now part of the common stock of chess.
Much of the received opinion about Duchamp’s chess comes from Le Lionnais’s 1975 interview. He insisted there was no Dada in Duchamp’s play; that only a true chess genius could transplant Dada into the game; that Nimzowitsch, not Duchamp, was the unwitting Dadaist—his “apparently stupid ideas” bringing victory through sheer anti-conformism. Duchamp, Le Lionnais said, was a conformist, steeped in theory, obedient to the principles of the game.
But I believe Le Lionnais missed the extent to which Nimzowitsch shaped Duchamp’s style. Even the opening of Duchamp’s well-known loss to Le Lionnais (1. c4 c5 2. Nc3 Nc6 3. g3 g6 4. Bg2 Bg7 5. d3 d6 6. e4) was introduced by Nimzowitsch at Dresden in 1926. Such borrowings run throughout Duchamp’s games like an underground stream.
I can prove the link easily enough. At the chateau of Duchamp’s widow, Teeny, in Fontainebleau, in the company of Barry Martin of the Chelsea Arts Club, I found Duchamp’s annotated copy of Nimzowitsch’s Chess Praxis hidden in a cupboard. If Le Lionnais had seen those detailed notes, he might have spoken differently.
Duchamp and Nimzowitsch shared, too, a certain philosophy. Duchamp once said: “Chess is a sport – a violent sport. This detracts from its most artistic connexions… if anything it is like a struggle.” Nimzowitsch, writing of the San Remo tournament in 1930, put it thus: “In its fascination and its rich variety, chess is a mirror of the life struggle itself, but to a similar degree it is exhausting and full of pain.” Neither man romanticised the game; both saw the fight beneath the form.
Writers have sometimes claimed that the conflict of two hostile forces runs through Duchamp’s art—the Bride and the Bachelors in The Large Glass, for example. The Times suggested in June 1966 that Duchamp’s devotion to chess expressed a wish for purity of thought, unsullied by anything decorative. Man Ray, who designed a chess set that Duchamp owned, once remarked that chess is a game where intense activity leaves no trace. Duchamp and Nimzowitsch sought the same thing: an aesthetic of thought rather than of appearance.
Kremer, in New In Chess, argued that the beauty in chess lies “completely in one’s grey matter” and that Duchamp cared for cerebral art—art appealing to intelligence over the senses. George Heard Hamilton, in Inside the Green Box, described Duchamp’s lifelong attempt to escape “retinal painting”, that seduction of the eye which he believed had carried art astray since Courbet. He wanted painting not of something, but as something. “I was interested in ideas,” he once said, “not merely in visual products.”
Chess fits this view precisely. Its beauty lies not in what is seen but in what is thought. Nimzowitsch wrote in Chess Praxis: “Those deluded by outward appearances only may mistakenly condemn moves as ugly… Beauty in chess is, in the final analysis, conditioned solely by the quality of thought.”
It becomes clear that Duchamp, Nimzowitsch and perhaps even Dada shared more common ground than they realised. Below is a record of Duchamp’s involvement with chess.
Principal chess happenings in the life of Marcel Duchamp:
1910: he paints The Chess Game .
1911: paints The Chessplayers and The Portrait of Chessplayers .
1918 : studies Capablanca’s games in Buenos Aires (Capablanca was to become World Champion in 1921) and designs his own chess set. The King had no cross on the crown.
1920: becomes member of Marshall Chess Club, New York.
1923: competes in first serious chess tournament in Brussels.
1924: plays chess against Man Ray in René Clair’s film Entr’Acte .
1924: wins Chess Championship of Haute Normandie.
1924: competes in Chess Championship of France (he plays a further three times up to 1928).
1924: competes in World Amateur Championship, Paris. Duchamp shares 21st place in B Group.
1925: declared a Chess Master by the French Chess Federation. He designs the poster for the French Championship held in Nice.
1927: marries Lydie Sarazin-Lavassor on June 7th. Daughter of a wealthy car manufacturer, Lydie is 15 years Duchamp’s junior. She leaves him after approximately one week, having glued his chess pieces to his board.
1928: shares First Prize at the Hyères International Tournament with O ’Hanlon and Halberstadt.
1930: André Breton criticises Duchamp in The Second Manifesto of Surrealism for abandoning art for chess.
1930: represents France in Hamburg Chess Olympics, playing on second board behind the World Champion, Alexander Alekhine.
1930: exhibits L’Echiquier Mural at Paris.
1931: becomes member of Committee of French Chess Federation and French Delegate to the World Chess Federation, a post he holds for six years.
1931: represents France in Prague Chess Olympics.
1932 : publishes chess book, L’Opposition et Les Cases conjugées sont reconciliées with Halberstadt in a limited addition of 1,000 copies.
1932: wins Chess Tournament in Paris. Plays against Buenos Aires Club by radio.
1933: translates classic chess book by Eugene Znosko-Borovsky into French (Comment il faut commencer une partie d’Échecs).
1933: represents France in Folkestone Chess Olympics (Duchamp’s last Olympiad).
1935: captain of French team in First Correspondence Olympics.
1937: commences writing chess column for Ce Soir.
1939: makes top score (9 points out of 11) in Correspondence Chess Olympics.
1944: Pocket Chess Set with Rubber Glove: Duchamp’s contribution to the Art Exhibition, The Imagery of Chess in the Julien Levy Gallery in New York (other contributions are from André Breton, John Cage, Max Ernst and Man Ray).
1946: commences work on Étant Donnés, concealing chessboard under twigs beneath nude figure. I had often wondered about the origins of the title for this work, until I recalled the opening words (quoted above) of the encomium on Duchamp from the Bulletin of the French Chess Federation from 1924.
1952: collaborates with Hans Richter in the film 8×8 based on chess.
1954: oil sketch of Chessplayers, 1911, is acquired by the Musée National d’Art Moderne in Paris; Duchamp’s first work in a French public collection!
1963: on the occasion of his first Retrospective Exhibition at the Pasadena Museum of Art, Duchamp plays chess in front of The Large Glass against a naked female opponent, Eve Babitz.
1964: Game of Chess with Marcel Duchamp, a filmed interview for French television by Jean-Marie Drot, wins first prize at the Bergamo International Film Festival, Italy.
1965: in New York, he exhibits his work, Chess Score, a record of a game he drew in 1928 with Grandmaster Tartakower.
1966 : organises chess exhibition, “Hommage à Caissa”, at the Cordier & Ekstrom Gallery, New York, to benefit the Marcel Duchamp Fund of the American Chess Foundation.
1967 : attends Monte Carlo Grandmaster Tournament, won by Bobby Fischer.
1968: in Toronto takes part in Reunion, a musical performance staged by John Cage, in the course of which Duchamp, Teeny Duchamp (his replacement, chess-playing consort for the unsatisfactory glue wielder) and Cage play chess, the moves played electronically triggering musical notes.
The following win has been described as Duchamp’s most accurate victory over a significant opponent. His adversary seems not merely unaware of Nimzowitsch’s theories but blithely unguarded against them, and Duchamp—armed with the Nimzowitschian style—sweeps the émigré Russian master from the board with ruthless efficiency.
It is taken from a collection of Duchamp’s games due to be published by New in Chess next year, provisionally entitled, Duchamp’s Chess Art: 64 Chess Games. It is the work of Adam Black, who has been compiling his definitive catalogue of Duchamp’s chess games since 2022.
Eugene Znosko-Borovsky vs. Marcel Duchamp
Paris, 1932, ‘Caïssa’ International tournament
- d4 Nf6 2. Nf3 b6 3. g3 Bb7 4. Bg2 c5 5. dxc5 bxc5 6. O-O g6 7. Na3?! TN
Even now, the theory at this point is quite diffuse, with 7. b3, having been tried [Jianu-Sonis, Tch-FRA, 2024] and, 7. Re1 [Li-Dimakiling, Dubai, 2024]. An earlier attempt was with, 7. c4 [Damljanovic-Marin, Istanbul Oly., 2000]. A year prior to this contest, 7. c3 had been tested [Tartakower-Zimmermann, Prague Oly., 1931]. And to finally complete the confusion, our engine produced 7. Nc3 and Re1 on an even footing. With all of this choice at hand, the option selected by Znosko-Borovsky, was perhaps interesting, but definitely inferior.
7… Bg7 8. Nc4?!
Presumably intending to meet, 8… d5 with, 9 Nce5 O-O, and 10. c4.
8… O-O 9. c3 d6 10. Bf4 Nbd7 11. Qb3 Bd5 12. Qa4 Nb6 13. Nxb6 axb6 14. Qc2 b5 15. b3?
An attempt to block out Black’s magnificent bishop on d5, but it fails to meet the overall threats building on the queenside. The a-pawn is now even more of a target than it already was. White’s kingside is a model of dormant passivity, and Black’s advantage is considerable. Both 15. Bg5 and a3 would have proved more resilient continuations.
15… Qa5 16. Rfc1?
The engine proposes that both, 16. Ng5 and Qd2 are better attempts to place a check on Black’s advantage and ambitions.
16… Be4 17. b4?
With a growing sense of alarm, White resorts to tactical measures, only to make matters worse. The more sensible measure of withdrawing his monarch with, Qd2 or Qd1 is best.
17… cxb4 18. cxb4 Qxb4 19. Qb3?!
White is losing further material. How he does so still matters. The move played places White very close to a lingering death, whereas, 19. a3 Rxa3 20. Qd2 Qxd2 21. Nxd2 Rxa1 22. Rxa1 Bxg2 23. Kxg2 is merely awful.
19… Nd5 20. Qxb4 Nxb4 21. Rab1?!
And as the pressure mounts, the mistakes multiply. White is close to the edge. Prosaically, either 21. a3 or Nd4 is an improvement over the text, but it’s all fiddling while Rome burns.
21… Bxb1
And Duchamp, being only human, is no longer able to resist cashing in on his advantage. However, his bishop is a better piece than the hapless rook he captures, and the order of the day should be to press on and demand more! 21… Nxa2 would achieve just that.
- Rxb1 Nxa2 23. Rxb5
White must be content with escaping from the maelstrom, with only the loss of an exchange and a pawn looking like very good business. Another perspective is that all he has achieved is postponing the inevitable tragedy…
23… Nc3 24. Rb2 Ra1+ 25. Bf1 Nd5!?
A weak and unadventurous continuation. For perhaps the first instance in this contest, it is time to consider whether Duchamp’s notorious nerves might intervene to enable defeat to be plucked from the jaws of victory once more. Black has an opportunity to whip his pawns into advancing with tempo after, 25… e5! but is too cautious to yet expedite this initiative.
- Rc2 Rb8?!
More prevarication; there is no rush to develop the second rook. Having blocked his pawns with his last, the natural continuation must be to remove half of White’s bishop pair with 26… Nxf4, and in so doing, free up the pawn chain once more. The engine gives, 27. gxf4 Rb8 28. e3 Rbb1 29. Nd2 Rc1 30. Rxc1 Rxc1, when Black holds all of the cards.
- Bc1 Nc3 28. Kg2 Rbb1 29. Bd2 Rxf1 30. Bxc3 Rfc1 31. Bxa1 Rxc2 32. Bxg7 Kxg7 33. e3 e5!
And in a vastly more simplified position, Black at last commits to the advance. How much stronger this might have been on move 25, matters not. Duchamp has brought himself to his happy hunting ground of an endgame.
- h4 f5 35. Kf1 Kf6 36. Ne1 Rb2 37. Nd3 Rb1+ 38. Ke2 Ke6 39. Ne1 Kd5
Duchamp’s last two moves could both be improved upon, but he is operating under the simple imperative of bringing his king into play as an active piece. Hard to argue with.
- Nf3 Rb2+ 41. Kf1
Time control has failed to deliver up any tricks or swindles to the abject remnants of White’s sorry position, 41. Kd3? e4+!? (the immediate 41… Rf1!! is probably stronger) 42. Kc3 Rxf2 43. Ng5?! h6 44. Nh3 Rf3 and White must resign. 41. Kd3 offers not much better.
41… h6 42. Kg2 Ke4 43. Nh2 d5 44. g4 f4 45. Nf1 d4
It is an academic matter that Stockfish announces mate in 11 moves
- exd4 exd4 47. g5 h5 48. Kh3 Rxf2 49. Nd2+ Kd3 50. Nc4 Rh2+ White resigned 0-1
Duchamp finishes with a swagger. His win against Koltanowski in fifteen moves is an incredible result, but here we see a polished performance against a top fifty player.
I am obliged to Grandmaster Keene’s critique: “I think the comments are unnecessarily harsh on Duchamp. He was winning so easily, overwhelmingly and quickly, that which way to cash in was largely a matter of style.”
Ray’s 206th book, “ Chess in the Year of the King ”, written in collaboration with Adam Black, and his 207th, “ Napoleon and Goethe: The Touchstone of Genius ” (which discusses their relationship with chess) can be ordered from both Amazon and Blackwells. His 208th, the world record for chess books, written jointly with chess playing artist Barry Martin, Chess through the Looking Glass , is now also available from Amazon.
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